Although Smith has fond memories of New York in the early to mid-Seventies, she resists nostalgia. 'The only reason I would romanticise the period is because so many of my friends are now dead. I'm not trapped in the Seventies. Movements are important and interesting, but we should remember that the idea of a movement is to keep moving.'

She is not oblivious to the fact that she has lived longer than most of her idols -- Rimbaud, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Jackson Pollock -- but believes the best is yet to come. 'I'm still clawing my way towards communicating my greatest thing or writing my greatest work,' she says. 'People always say to me that I romanticise all these people that died young, but I don't romanticise the indulgence with which they ran themselves into the ground -- I just loved the work they did.' She says she would like to live to 92. Why 92? 'I don't know, I just chose it -- I can imagine holding on to my mental faculties that long.'

Patti Smith interview Sunday Herald (Glasgow) May 4, 2003